Problematising professionalism: examining the media discourse of consultants’ professionalism in the 2023 PwC Australia government consulting scandal

This research examines how the 2023 PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) Australia consulting scandal challenged understandings of what it means to be a public sector consultant. The scandal problematised the professionalism of consultants working for government in the discursive field of the media scandal – which overlapped with the Australian Senate inquiry on the integrity and management of consulting firms – and aired long-standing criticisms of consultants. Through an analysis of 331 news media articles published over five months, two distinct phases are identified: the ‘bad consultant’ and the ‘good system’. In the initial phase, the archetype of the ‘bad consultant’ challenges consultants’ performance of professionalism in terms of ‘expertise’. In the subsequent phase, there is a discursive shift to systemic concerns about the prevalence of consultants at the intersection of public interest and the hybrid government context. At stake during this discourse event was not whether consultants met their own definition of professionalism, but rather how consultants’ relationship with government and performance of professionalism was defined in terms of ‘public interest’ – itself a discursive construct.